Career
On January 13, 2015, Tinderholt succeeded Diane Patrick, a four-term representative whom he unseated in the Republican primary election on March 4, 2014. Tinderholt is a businessman and former soldier. He enlisted in the United States Air Force in 1988 and was a Spanish language cryptologist and linguist who worked in counter drug missions in Central and South America.
He returned to active duty in January 2002 as a platoon leader and executive officer at the company level and then as detachment commander for the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment.
During his time in the Iraq War, Tinderholt and ten other American soldiers lived with and trained an Iraqi Special Forces Battalion. He then returned to Dallas as a battalion executive officer
He managed more than four hundred personnel and a budget of $836 million. In his twenty-one years in the military, Tinderholt earned the Bronze Star and the Combat Action Badge.
Tinderholt has lived in Nebraska, Iowa, Fairfax, Virginia, and Washington, District of Columbia He has been stationed at Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo and Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, and the Fort Irwin National Training Center in the Mojave Desert of California.
After his military service, Tinderholt was a professor of Spanish at Columbia College in Fort Worth. He is the current director of training and recruiting for Eliot Management Group, Limited Liability Company.
In the November 4 general election, Tinderholt, with 23,034 votes (566 percent), defeated the Democrat Cole Ballweg and the Libertarian Robert Harris, who received 16,461 (405 percent), and 1,172 (29 percent), respectively. The largely Republican district was once represented by Kent Grusendorf, whom Patrick had unseated in the 2006 primary.
He was endorsed in his legislative campaign by Cathie Adams, a former state Republican Party chairman and president of the Texas Eagle Forum, neighboring legislators Giovanni Capriglione, Jonathan Stickland, Bill Zedler, and Matt Krause.
On February 25, 2015, Tinderholt filed a complaint against a Texas probate judge who had issued a ruling allowing two women to marry in Travis County. Tinderholt filed a handwritten complaint with the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct against Judge David Wahlberg, rather than against Judge Guy Herman, the judge who had made the ruling about which Tinderbolt complained.
He filed the complaint based on the judge allegedly missing to obey a 45-day notification period. However, as it turned out, Judge Herman had notified the state attorney general"s office, which opted not to get involved in the case.
